Surly Waiter at the Impossibly Hip Café

[mallorys_camera]

"These French fries are cold," BB told the waiter at Lola’s pleasantly enough when he brought our lunch. "Could you warm them up please?"

The waiter glared at BB, turned around, and marched away.

Ten minutes later, the waiter came back with a plate of French fries, slammed them on our table without a word.

The French fries were cold. What were we supposed to do? Eat cold French fries because Lola's is such an impossibly hip café?

"Do you want me to go back to the tip jar and fish out your tip?" I joked to BB. He'd left a generous one.

"No, that's okay," BB said.

BB is much nicer than I am.

###

It was good to hang out with BB because I am feeling fragile/fragile/fragile, and whenever I’m around BB, I feel enveloped in affection. BB likes me. BB enjoys me. When I’m around BB, I don’t feel any need to self-censor.

“So, put them on a Keyline trolley,” BB said when I described to him the absolute B|L|O|C|K I had arrived at with the Work in Progress. “You might have to do some research.”

“I’m pretty sure the Hudson Valley Library System has no information whatsoever on New York City transit systems in the 1920s,” I said.

“So, get a Brooklyn library card. Anybody who lives in the state of New York can get a Brooklyn library card.”

Ding! Ding! Ding!

I also discovered that BB spends huge amounts of time practicing the piano. I knew he played the piano—every time I visit him in his Catskills aerie, he gets up from his piano to let me in.

But I guess I hadn’t realized that occupied so much of his time.

It made me very happy to discover this.

He plays because he enjoys it.

He doesn't talk about it.

He has no ambitions to rent a concert venue and surprise the world with his expert fingering of Rachmaninoff and Debussy.

He just likes to play.

And now I have the image of BB sitting in his Catskills aerie on a winter night while the snow swirls all around him—or swoons if you want to go Joycean.

###

Else?

The car’s been diagnosed. If all goes well, if the catalytic converter I ordered shows up when it’s supposed to show up, the car should be discharged on Thursday. I managed to whittle 20% off the estimated price of repairs with my Internet sleuthing. So that was something.

And despite the maneuverings of my wonderful new IT fix-it guy, my printer is still not printing the way it should be printing, so I’m gonna need to figure out some other way to print the stuff that needs to be printed in order to finish the Robin Art Installation, which I will be carting up to Ithaca.

I also want to figure out some wonderful bday present for Susie.

Her father was actually Carlos Castenada’s thesis advisor. I was thinking that could be leveraged somehow into the bday present. But how?

I’m still sad. Really, really sad.

But I don’t know why.